In a recent story on Cards Wire, Hall of Fame general manager Bill Polian said those on the outside don’t have 45 percent of the draft information teams have, a number that is as high as 60 percent for quarterbacks.
So it was that Arizona Cardinals general manager Monti Ossenfort was asked what he thought about that assessment.
He said, “We dig deeper. We have a lot of medical information at our (disposal). We have countless interviews with these prospects in person, on Zoom, on their campus, at the all-star games. The public doesn’t have access to those. Our scouts have gathered information that the public doesn’t have. I just think the volume and depth of the information that we have that goes into our evaluation of a player; it’s just much more extensive, which is necessary for us to get the players in the proper place on our board.”
Since Day 1, Ossenfort and head coach Jonathan Gannon have consistently talked about their philosophy of who they bring into the building and they both repeated it like a mantra Thursday.
Asked about his philosophy, Ossenfort said, “Good players, the right people; can’t get enough of them. That will always be our draft philosophy. Picking the right people. Good people, good players. People that fit what we’re trying to do both on the field and off the field. We can’t go wrong if we draft those people.”
As to the importance of that, Gannon said, “Very. I think that’s what wins. Team-first people, team-first players. When they understand that, they live that, and that’s how they go about going through their daily routine; I think that’s what wins. That’s something that is really cool because I know we’re very aligned on that.”
To learn that, Polian said one of the crucial parts of the process are the 30 visits that take place during the last month of the runup to the draft.
Both Gannon and Ossenfort stressed how important those visits are in confirming their assessments of players.
Asked if he tries to connect with prospects during their visits, Gannon said, “Yeah, 100 percent. The way Monti has our 30 visits set up I think is phenomenal for the information that we get to connect with the player on a personal level to figure out if he fits the price of admission to come here. That’s a really cool thing to sit down and talk with those guys. It’s a very detailed-out scripted day of how we do it.
“We find out a lot of information, but it’s cool to meet the guys or get a second look at those guys. Some of those guys sometimes it is the first time I’ve got a chance to meet them. That’s a cool process that we put a lot of stock into.”
As for the structure of the visits, Ossenfort concluded that the players have interactions with a myriad of club personnel.
“We call it the county fair,” he said, likely without the funnel cake. “We bring the guys in, and we put them through the paces. We’re just trying to get to know the guys and try as best we can to replicate what a Wednesday in November is going to be in our building. I think what we find is that by the end of the day, we have a pretty good feel on multiple levels of who the player is as a person, what they can handle mentally and really what they’re about.
“We have the players meet with a bunch of different individuals and we get perspectives from all aspects of our football operations. By the end of the day, we feel pretty good about at least having a feel for who they are as people.”
For them, that is as important as who they are as players.
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